problems with 2 NICs in amd64

[Pedro Zorzenon Neto <pzn@terra.com.br>]

Hi,

   I don't know if this is a problem in amd-64 porting... please let me
know if there is a better mailing-list for this question.

   I had a machine running debian-testing with amd-k7 processor.
Unfortunately, the motherboard broke. I have two new motherboards with
"AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3000+" that I wanted to use for this server.

   Since I think that 64bit processors are compatible with i386/32bit, I
just put the hard-disk in the new motherboard. I'm not interested in
performance right now, just need that it works.

   I need two NICs in this computer, for running a real ip + private ip
+ openswan + apache-ssl + webmail

   I have several NICs available. 2x realtek 8139, 2x 3com905, sis900,
via-rhine-2. I just need 2 NICs working.

   Everytime that I put two NICs in the PCI slots, none of them work.
The only case that work is a single 3com905 NIC. I tried with the two
motherboards, with the 2 AMD processors, and I could not make debian
work with the two NICs. All the NICs are working ok in other machines
and both motherboards are new.


   The problem that occours is:
   
     "lspci" : show all the NICs: OK
     
     "modprobe MODULE" : loads the NIC module: OK
     
     "lsmod" : show the modules loaded: OK
     
     "dmesg | grep -i eth" : shows that eth0 and eth1 were detected
     Example:
       eth0: VIA Rhine II at 0x1a400, 00:18:f3:fd:ad:a8, IRQ 233.
       eth0: MII PHY found at address 1, status 0x7849 advertising 01e1 Link 0000.
     
     "uname -a" : tried with "2.6.18-4-amd64", "2.6.18-4-486" and
"2.6.17-4-k7" debian kernels.

   up to now, everything seems OK.
   
   when running the command:
      ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0
      
   if fails with the following message:
      SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
      eth0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
      SIOCSIFNETMASK: No such device

   The only situation that "ifconfig" sets up correctly is with one
3com905 NIC plugged into PCI slot, when there are two nics, none work.

   I don't know what to do now. All hardware is OK, I tried several
hardware combinations... with the HD in a -k7 machine it works OK, but
I don't have a -k7 motherboard available for this server, and I'd like
to upgrade it to amd64.

   I have no previous experience with amd-64 processors.

   Any hint about how to solve this issue?

   Thanks in advance,
   Sorry for the huge message,
    Pedro